


Picking up the Pieces

by sadlikeknives



Category: Mercy Thompson Series - Patricia Briggs
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-26 04:47:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17739293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadlikeknives/pseuds/sadlikeknives
Summary: AfterMoon Called, Warren's house and life are in pieces.  This is what pack is for.





	Picking up the Pieces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [not_laurence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_laurence/gifts).



It wasn't until everything was over and Adam went to pick Jesse up from Warren's house that he had a chance to really assess the damage—to Jesse's hair, but also to Warren's house. The pack had picked up the worst of the broken furniture when they'd come slinking in after Samuel broke up the fight and Adam made himself known, but that just meant that now, instead of being a disaster zone, it was a mess with half the furniture missing and at least one hole in the wall.

"I'll pay for the repairs and your furniture, of course," Adam said after he'd sent Jesse to the car and stepped into the doorway so he could keep her in his line of sight while they had this conversation, and Warren went very still for half a second, old instincts looking for the trap, Adam thought, heartsick, before his good-ol'-boy mask slid itself neatly back into place.

"No, that's fine, boss," he said. "I got it covered."

Adam would like to have cited the pack rulebook chapter and verse to explain to him why it was his job as Alpha to make Warren as close as he could, considering he could do nothing about Kyle, to whole after this mess, but according to the pack rulebook it wasn't, technically, his problem: it was Darryl's, as the one who'd gone off half-cocked and caused the property damage. But Darryl and Warren's relationship was...not the best, and although Darryl seemed to have finally decided Warren was trustworthy, Adam didn't want to push anything there just now. "This was pack business," he said patiently, since that much was true. "It's to the pack to make it right." _This is why you pay tithes,_ he almost said, but, 'So Darryl can break half your furniture,' was decidedly _not_ why any of his wolves paid tithes, and Warren barely scraped by as it was, so his tithe was nominal.

Adam had offered him a job with Hauptman Security, which he'd politely turned down, when he was new in the pack. Adam suspected he'd seen it as charity, which it hadn't been meant as—rather _security_. Now he'd wished he'd waited for him to get more settled before he made the offer, because Warren was in a different enough place he might have accepted it now—or at least, before this mess—if it was a new one, while repeating it would garner the same result. Warren was stubborn like that.

Warren's mouth pinched into a line as he looked around his living room, and he finally said, "Hell, Adam, most of it was from the thrift store or the curb. It's not like it was worth anything to start with."

That was, in fact, the other part of the reason it should have been Darryl's problem directly—the cost of correcting his screw-up would be low enough for him to absorb without assistance from his Alpha, even though he certainly wouldn't have been _replacing_ Warren's things with items from the thrift store and the curb—but Adam was definitely not going to say anything about that. Instead, he said, "Warren. You're not on your own here."

Warren was still in a way that spoke of _control_ , and he said, like an automaton, "I'm fine, boss. I can handle this."

"I have no doubt that you can. That's not the issue at hand." He didn't touch the first half of Warren's statement. He was not fine, and they both knew it, both had heard the lie, but Adam could see that alternate measures were going to be called for, so he dropped it, said something about getting Jesse home, and made his goodbyes.

***

Warren wished he could say he was surprised when he opened his door, mainly to get the knocking to stop, and found Honey Jorgenson on the steps, but he really was not. "Do you know what time it is?" he asked her.

"It's noon."

"Exactly. And I work _nights_." He hadn't been asleep. He'd been staring at the ceiling in the spare room, where he had been attempting sleep because his own bed smelled like Kyle. But Honey didn't need to know that.

"Oh, whatever," she said. 

"Don't you have a job?"

"Did you miss the part where my husband owns the business? They can make do without me for one afternoon. Get dressed, we're going to Target."

"Excuse me?"

"At first I was just going to have everything delivered from the Ikea dot com website--"

Her enunciation was precise enough that Warren had to say, "Sometimes I can really tell you're even older than me."

"--but Peter said you wouldn't like that, and I decided he was probably right, because Peter is generally right about things."

"This is true," Warren agreed. "Did Peter also tell you it's not nice to wake people in the middle of their night?"

She didn't dignify that with a reply. "So we're going to Target, because apparently Target sells furniture. Did you know that?"

"Of course I knew that Target sells furniture, Honey, but we're not going to Target."

"I mean, obviously we're going to lunch first. My treat."

"No. I'm going back to bed."

"And then when you wake up, you still won't have any furniture, because Darryl threw a temper tantrum--"

"Given the circumstances his reaction was perfectly--"

"Oh, don't give me that. He has no idea how lucky he is."

Well. That was certainly getting way too close to things they really shouldn't acknowledge out loud. "I'm sorry, were you in the room? I don't recall seeing you there."

She looked down her nose at him from several inches below his eye level, and without removing her sunglasses. It was, Warren thought, truly impressive. "I don't have to have been in the room, Warren. Now _get dressed_ , we're going to Target." 

Sometimes you could also really tell that she wasn't a submissive wolf at all, but she did a pretty good act most of the time. Warren couldn't quite recall when she'd started dropping it around him, but he still had to warn her to, "Don't tell me what to do."

"If you'd let Adam replace your furniture in a timely manner I wouldn't have to."

"It's been less than a week, and also, you're not buying me furniture."

" _Obviously_. But I have someone else's credit card and I'm not afraid to use it."

Warren considered the situation. He couldn't get rid of Honey. Well, he could order her to leave, but if she really had the pack credit card, that meant she was here on orders from Adam, and wouldn't have to comply. If Adam hadn't given her a clear-cut order, she might, based on her place in the pack, have to leave, but then she'd just go get a proper order from Adam and be back, besides which he knew from watching others suffer he'd pay hell for it for weeks, and with him she wouldn't even be subtle. Also, Peter would look disappointed at him, and no one ever wanted that. But there was a saying about horses and water that seemed applicable: she could drag him to Target but she couldn't make him buy anything. And he hadn't been sleeping anyway.

"Fine," he said. "Give me ten minutes."

***

"This isn't furniture," Honey said, frowning at the shelves.

"Yes, it is," Warren said, wondering what she had against particleboard. He gestured to the assembled piece. "See?"

"This is boxes. The furniture is just for display." She pointed to a sign that said as much.

"The furniture is in the boxes, Honey."

She was a smart woman; she figured it out after a moment. "You have to put it together yourself? What's the point of that?" Spoken like someone who had owned most of her furniture since before flat pack was even invented, Warren thought wryly. There was something to be said for quality and stability, not that he would know much about either of those things.

"It's smaller for transport. You know it comes from Ikea that way too, right?"

Honey looked appalled for a moment, then rallied. "You know, we could go to an actual furniture store--"

"No."

"And you could get furnishings made out of actual wood--"

"No."

"Instead of this flimsy particle board nonsense that wasn't even invented until after both of us were born--" Target was more or less deserted, or she wouldn't be able to get away with talking like that, Warren thought.

"No."

"And it would come properly assembled! Like furniture is supposed to."

"Or we could go to a thrift store like I was going to in the first place. Sometimes you can find quality pieces there." Sometimes. Not often. In Warren's experience you had better luck that way in areas that had been heavily settled longer than the Tri-Cities had been. A spark of some idea lit Honey's face, and he added hastily, " _Not_ an antique store."

"I though the gays loved antiquing."

"I can say that, Honey," he said patiently. "You can't say that."

"Right," she agreed, actually looking contrite. "Sorry." She pushed the cart she'd optimistically grabbed at the entrance further along the aisle and asked, "So how did your dinner with Kyle go?"

Warren had to take a moment to force down the lump in his throat before he could answer that. "I don't know."

"How can you not know?"

"I mean, it didn't go great. He's pissed, and he's freaked out. He says he needs some time. And it's not—he says he'll call me. He has a lot of questions, so I think he will actually call me. So it's not over yet. But he's moving out. He's coming over on Saturday to get the rest of his stuff." Warren's house would be even emptier then. "But it's not over yet. So. I don't know."

Honey stopped and touched his elbow gently, so he would turn toward her. "Warren...if you need me or Peter to stay with you, or if you ever want to crash at our place..."

"Why would I need that?" he asked, genuinely confused.

She hesitated before saying, "I don't know how much you know about it, but sometimes werewolves pine."

"Honey," he told her, just as gentle as she'd been with him. "This is not my first rodeo." She was, for once, speechless at that. "I'll be fine. I'm always fine." Usually, at something like this point, there was no hope, and he was picking up the pieces of his life as well as his heart. This time, he still had a job and a house and hell, a pack. And he still had a chance with Kyle. He'd be fine. He had maybe never been as gone on a guy as he was on Kyle, but what it came down to was always this: Warren would survive it, whatever 'it' was.

"But you don't have to do it alone. That's what pack is."

"Adam said something like that."

"Adam says smart things sometimes."

"Here's the thing, though: most of the rest of the pack wouldn't spit on me if I was on fire."

"More of them would than you think. And the rest of them would kill the person who set you on fire," she argued. "Even Paul."

He was forced to agree that, "There is that."

"You know," she said, "I'm sure if you're set on this ridiculous box furniture--"

"Flat pack. It's called flat pack."

"I'm sure if you're set on this ridiculous box furniture that Peter would help you put it together."

"Would he, now?"

"I could read the instructions. Assuming it comes with instructions."

"Sometimes it comes with pictures." She made a disgusted noise, and Warren almost laughed. For the first time in days, he felt like he could.

"Those shelves are okay," Honey said.

Warren followed her line of sight. They were shelves. They were white. "I've seen worse," he agreed.

"We're buying them," she declared.

"No--!"

"No, you showed a moment of weakness. We're buying the shelves. Your books are living somewhere other than the floor. I've decided. Now help me lift them in case there's a security camera."

Warren sighed and accepted his fate, and his shelves. He made Honey do most of the lifting, though. There had to be limits.


End file.
